Keeps: The design of these keeps are the bread and butter in what makes these maps fun.
They are well constructed with their own Character and makes them interesting to fight in, the NPCs are challenging and add flavor to the fights and are not punching bags.
I personally enjoy the shrines, they add something for the roamers to take, in addition for defenders AND attackers to capitalize on, but not incentivising zergs/people to just camp there.
Issues- I CANNOT for the life of me, distinguish where the Gates and Walls are, and where it will lead to. It is not clear on the maps where they are, And SOME Outer Walls DO NOT lead to inner gates/walls AT ALL. They just block of areas to access shortcuts to other parts of the map.
For example, in the North Outer Air Keep, there is a wall in the left side beside the North Gate. This DOES NOT lead to Inner, instead it is a short-cut to the south side of the map around the keep. This makes it extremely aggrivating that this was not noticed NOR distinquished.
When I played in Alphine Borderlands. I CAN CLEARLY TELL that “this is a wall” “this is the gate” and I can clearly see the inner gates/walls after on the map and visibly.
The Gates and walls in desert CAMOUFLAGE with the turrain, extremely hard to tell. I would at least suggest placing RED LINES on the map, showing these are the walls/gates and darker red lines to show these are inner walls/gates. AND green lines showing these are walls that DO NOT penetrate the keep but just used as a block to access other parts of the map.
Roaming: At first I was a little disappointed how the Towers prevent you from accessing caps around the north map if you are coming from south, I realized you can still roam the entire map, but you have to go the long way around the tower.
The map feels very maze like, and will take awhile to learn(so I needed fall dmg trait incase I slipped) but after I learnt the map after the day, I was pretty comfortable roaming around, felt very fun to explore, run through the mazes.
However the Shrines felt very disjointed and don’t connect on the paths unlike camps. Like on the fire keep I took the south shrine, back track and go up above the fire keep (btw we didn’t own the keep), take the top-mid shrine, then run ahead to take the last shrine.
Despite that, the shrines were fun, added some spice knowing I’d be helping keeps that belong to us and weaken keeps that belong to the enemy, along the the buff that came along with it. In my opinion is a nice touch for roamers along with camp changes. I’m stilll iffy about the shrines placement.
I guess thats ok, just pointing out that detail.
Camps were interesting in the sense they make it harder for you to stack, on T1 the camps guards are all Melee, which is a nice touch, gives them some meat. However as I kited them, they have a VERY LOW aggro range, that means that even when I walked around the SUPPLY DEPOT, they respawn back to their spot and regenerate ALL THEIR HEALTH, even tho I wasn’t that far away. Very annoying.
The Yaks and Sentries feel like they have a Unique worth now, and no longer chop liver, good job on that.
Towers: My initial issue was roaming around it to get to camps, but kinda got used to it. Felt weird at first, but once I knew the route it was alright.
HOWEVER, in the Alphine Borderlands, if you took Southwest tower for example, and built a treb you can use it to take and go on offense to take bay, and would be an interesting fight, like a tug of war, between those in the keep and those in the tower.
Here the Towers hold ZERO strategic value to assaulting a keep, the keep is too far away from the Tower for it to use against, you removed a fun aspect and now the towers feel like you just own a Rock you can port to and block other parts of the map.
It has no offensive capabilities, its just a large junkyard to defend and block with.
Oasis: The center map/event is fun, when everyone is in equal numbers, that was my only experience. I do hear about zergs camping that spot so could be adjusted otherwise.
Overall: The map takes awhile to learn, once you do, its fun to move around, explore, and fight in.
The keeps are a pain in the butt tho, you don’t know where the gates and walls are, you don’t know where they lead to nor are visibly apparent on the map AND on screen, this needs to be adjusted and handled for sure.
The design, NPCS, lords, and shrines all work well tho, they synergize well and makes it feel like a real keep that can be defended AND can defend itself.
I would like Towers to have some offensive worth and attacking advantage to take the keep, moving it closer possibly. OR give it a unique mechanic when it’s upgraded well enough, like a mini-laser or builds auto-matic siege weapons for you to take out and assault with.
The map feels great! Some things are still iffy though, but can be adjusted and tweaked.
THANKS ANET!
